Man of La Mancha

Content Warning: This play romanticizes mental health conditions and uses terminology that reinforces the stigma around them.

Written in the early 17th century, Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1615) is one of the best-known works of Spanish literature. The English language even adopted a new word from the eponymous protagonist: “quixotic,” an adjective describing a person or project that is excessively idealistic and therefore likely to fail. The word simultaneously evokes admiration for the idealism and pity for the person’s deluded hopes. Cervantes’s characterization of Don Quixote contains that same ambiguity, and that is part of what inspired Dale Wasserman’s Man of La Mancha three centuries later.

Though sometimes called the first modern novel, Don Quixote drew on a number of previous genres of fiction. Most importantly, Cervantes satirized many of the tropes of late medieval chivalric romances. These chivalric stories narrated a glorified world of knights who performed amazing feats of arms in service of a noble lady, adhering to a strict code of honor. Sorcerers, giants, enchantments, and other fantastical elements created conflicts that the hero had to resolve. Cervantes’s Don Quixote is a minor noble who reads these romances and develops the delusion that he is one of these fictional heroes.